As spring comes to the Coast, skaters will once again have to say goodbye to the ice at the Sunshine Coast Arena.
The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) will not be offering spring ice at its facility in Sechelt because of a lack of bookings amid ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.
At the Jan. 27 board meeting, staff told SCRD directors that the requested time for spring ice is not enough to cover incremental operational costs, and would result in a deficit of $29,900. The user groups would need to book an additional 335 hours – roughly 41 hours per week – of primetime ice to cover the required costs.
Spring ice is only provided at the Sunshine Coast Arena when variable costs are equal to or less than the revenue generated from user group bookings. Although this requirement was waived for the 2020 spring season, the pandemic thwarted those plans. The 2021 season continued to be affected by pandemic-related restrictions and spring ice was not offered. This year, the ice user group requests for the eight weeks of April and May would bring in a total projected revenue of $28,265.18 (or $3,533.15 per week), falling short of the incremental cost of $7,435 per week.
The staff report notes the weekly incremental cost was calculated in 2019, and costs are likely higher now.
For this spring, the Sunshine Coast Skate Club requested 140 hours of youth prime time and 40 hours of youth non-prime time, which would cost the club a total of $15,185.20. The Sunshine Coast Minor Hockey Association requested 130 hours of youth prime time, while various adult groups asked for 7.5 hours.
But the demographic of the Coast’s population means the older population drives the recreation interests of the region, staff said.
“In this case of spring ice, it’s always a challenge in smaller populations, in my experience, until you get to a certain threshold of people and users, and the sport groups and the size of those sport groups. It’s an economy of scale in terms of how many people and how much ice you have,” the SCRD’s general manager of community services, Shelley Gagnon, said at the meeting. “Here, part of the challenge is that you really need more adult use of the ice and more tournament use.”
On Jan. 25, the provincial health officer announced youth sports tournaments will be allowed to operate as of Feb. 1, although adult sports tournaments will remain restricted.
For the Sunshine Coast Skating Club (SCSC), not having access to local spring ice has a financial implication as well as effects on their participants. As Skate Canada can hold tournaments again, and those events are held in April, May and August, SCSC president Andrea Watson told Coast Reporter training needs to continue year-round. Their ice request doesn’t meet the threshold, but kids are in school during the times still available.
The club has to refund all of the registration from April to the end of May, and their coaches’ employment is also affected. For the kids – the SCSC has around 200 members and Watson says the hockey association has even more – not having access to local ice curtails their ability to participate and advance in their sport.
“What happens is the kids get to this point where they’re like, ‘OK, I no longer have ice, I can’t participate in competitions. I’m not going to make the national team this year, I’m not gonna be able to compete against all of these people. So I’m going to quit,’” Watson said. The loss of their members then has a financial impact on the club.
“I just feel as though they’re doing the community and these kids such a disservice. And the fact that there’s just no transparency or even collaboration,” Watson said.
“The club’s just gonna have to try and keep going. But at some point, honestly, I don’t know how long anyone really wants to keep fighting this fight for.”
Roberts Creek director Andreas Tize commented on the emails the SCRD has received from adults and athletes who want to pursue their sport on ice.
“I absolutely appreciate that. At the same time, I think we do have to look out for the community and the greater use of our tax dollars that are responsibly spent,” Tize said. “To be honest, in this climate here, skating itself is a luxury, even in the wintertime. In the summertime, nobody was able to skate if it wasn’t for technology, and technology costs money. I’m OK with, unfortunately, shutting things down as of April.”
The youth groups have also asked for a breakdown of the incremental costs, Watson said, but have not received those numbers. Watson pointed to the results of a freedom of information request the ice groups received in 2017 and 2021 that showed revenue from ice rentals was much higher than dry floor rentals in the same facility – more than $960,000 in revenue from ice rentals versus less than $45,000 in dry floor rentals in 2017. SCSC is calling for transparency about the costs and collaboration from the regional district.
During the board meeting, Gagnon said 2020 and 2021 were irregular seasons with COVID-19, and that anecdotally the costs have not gone down.
The decision could still be reconsidered, if enough spring ice requests are received before Feb. 15. If spring ice is still not granted after that time, recreation staff will work with the dryland user groups to maximize the use of the space during the spring season, and continue to follow public health orders.
